A Volk Fable
by SLOVA
Summary: Something was wrong. There were bodies on the street, completely frozen. Were they dead? The Doctor seemed to believe they were frozen in time. What could have caused this, and why did their hearts need to stop? With the help of an uncanny young woman who has yet to be affected, the Doctor takes to the stars in the TARDIS to solve these lethal stasis locks.
1. Gangly

**A roleplay turned fanfiction. In collaboration with the brilliant and talented Lydia, who harnesses the power of BBC shows in her heart and pumps it out into her veins like bursts of terrific little fireballs.**

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Something strange had happened around the city that had even the homeless men down on 42nd Avenue retract their old, battered tin cans and hide in the crevices of their alleys. People were standing still. In plain daylight, with no pre-conceived warning or anything of the like, people walked about—tying their shoes or jogging across the street or hailing taxis—and suddenly, they just stopped.

Completely. Frozen in their stance. Not falling. Not blinking.

Now, this was heard of at a flash mob, where everyone suddenly stopped and stood still for an hour to fool the public. But, in such cases, their hearts wouldn't have followed suit, too. Their movement may have stopped, but in flash mobs, the hearts of men and women and children did not just simply _stop_ their beating. Yet, it was happening all across the English city. A man reaching for an overturned penny on the ground, a woman pushing a baby carriage, a child hugging their mother— frozen; dead.

The heart just stopped. Paralyzed bodies, like crisp leaves, their previous expressions still worn with as much passion as the initial intent. One push forward and they fell to pieces.

Something was wrong.  
Something was terribly and twistedly wrong.

This day should have been normal. A break from all the chaos of the life of a time traveler. A vacation.

But of course, nothing like that ever happened.

As the Doctor walked down the bare street, dressed that day with a brown t-shirt under his blue suit in place of his normal shirt and tie, he started to sense something odd. It made the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end, a chill running through his body. His eyes trailed over to a couple standing by a nearby building, not moving a muscle.

_Literally_ not moving a muscle.

"Hello, are you alright?" asked the Doctor with some concern. All around him, he was suddenly realizing, people had frozen stiff. This was . . . . He reached into his inside jacket pocket, pulling out his silver sonic and scanning it up and down the young woman's body, focusing on her eyes, her heart. "That's . . . impossible . . . ." he whispered with disbelief.

It was strange. Just . . . sporadic spurts of people. One there. A couple there. Another two down the block. People walked around them, still, in crowds, avoiding contact with them as much they could. They were ignoring it. Was this . . . a regular occurrence? No, not ignoring. As more and more froze, they fled, as if it would just spread through the air in a wave.

As the Doctor saw another couple of people freeze in place, he ran to stop in front of them. He waved one hand rapidly back and forth in front of their eyes, staring intently at their faces. Hearts pounding, he pulled a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and perched them on the end of his nose. He buzzed the sonic screwdriver over the pair's entire body, an expression of growing unease on his face.

"This is impossible," he said aloud again, running a hand through his hair and making it stand even more on end. He turned around, catching hold of a nearby woman's sleeve, one of the people still moving. "Oi! D'you know what's going on here?" he asked intently, his voice urgent, words coming out in a rapid stream, "You lot, you'd normally be panicking like a rat in water when something like this happens."

The young lady turned around, her large grey eyes suddenly going wide as she observed the young man's frantic face.

Parting her pale, full lips, she breathed, " . . . Peter?"

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**Thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated.**


	2. Excitable

**Again, the Doctor's parts are to be hailed by the all-powerful Lydia. HAIL LYDIA.**

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The young lady whose sleeve he had grabbed flinched suddenly, gasping . He had pulled it up just enough to expose her streak white skin, which glimmered in the sunlight suddenly before it began to smoke. She stumbled backwards once, into the shadow of a building, away from the sunlight. She wore a long, tan trenchcoat long enough to cover her legs until her tall boots did the rest of the job. Her face was obscured by a large mass of straight, raven black hair that trailed down to her thighs.

"Peter, you were . . . in Nevada, why have you come back to England," said the woman softly in a calm, Eastern Russian accent. She lifted her head, exposing a...bluntly, _gorgeous_ young face with full, pale pink lips, pale lavender eyes, a small, pointed nose, and features that indicated her Slavic heritage. She stared at him, her lips parting. "Peter, why-" she asked, blinking harshly.

The Doctor took a step backwards, taking off his glasses and stowing them in his inside pocket. He blinked at the woman's reaction, not really noticing the fact that she was, indeed, very pretty. It was just that he was a bit preoccupied. "I...think you've got me confused for someone else," he said after a moment, sounding thoroughly perplexed. She noticed that, even though his face was nearly identical, there were some distinct differences. This young man was more well groomed, his hair gelled up, face shaven. He was also dressed in something other than black, and his accent sounded a bit crisper, more intense.

And his heart. His _hearts_. His scent. That was why she hadn't caught him from afar. It couldn't have been her Peter. The resemblance was uncanny, but alas . . . .

"My apologies, I must have . . ." she trailed off, then crossed her arms, practically hugging them as her fingers curled over her forearms. "This has been occurring for some time." she commented quietly, eyes trailing to the couple. "They merely walk . . . sit . . . laugh, and their hearts pause. Even mid-beat, they pause and they remain in a constant state of...what they had been doing. As if frozen from thin air . . . "

"Frozen in time," murmured the Doctor to himself, turning on his heel and walking a few feet to examine another person without a second glance at the woman he was speaking with. "There doesn't seem to be any pattern, any link between the victims . . . and they're all . . . . " He trailed off, pressing his index and middle finger to the throat of the young man in front of him. His eyebrows furrowed slightly.

Nothing.

But, his vein was tensed up, as if blood was built up in it - in the process of a pulse. He still felt rather warm, but who knew if that was fleeting or not, it had only been a few minutes. The lovely lady didn't move from the safety of the shadows, but simply watched the young man work quietly, her dark brows furrowing.

"They have no pulse," she said to him lowly. "Yet their blood stays warm. The city knows not what to do with them. Some remain at the medical services building . . . others were taken into black, stretched cars . . . "

"Maybe they're not quite dead yet," murmured the man, almost to himself, as he studied the person in front of him. "Just suspended in time, for whatever reason . . . "

He paused, then glanced over at the young woman. He grinned, putting his hands in his pockets and striding over to her. "Hi! Sorry! I'm the Doctor, by the way. You don't have to worry because I'll put everything right in no time~"

The reserved lady blinked twice in mild surprise as he just sauntered up to her. Her brows furrowed. "The Doctor...? You offer me your rank rather than your name?"

"That's all I've got," he said somewhat apologetically. "I think . . . how far has this spread to?" The way he had said _spread_ was unnerving; like it was a virus. "Is it just this city? And why aren't you being effected?"

Only thing he had? Well, then again, that wasn't so new to her. ". . . Carmilla," she said softly, then flickered her now pale blue eyes over to the poor, frozen things near them. "Only this city," she confirmed. At his final question, she frowned slightly. "I am-" She paused. " . . . not everyone is affected. Immediately, at the least, I believe." For all she knew, it could happen to her, too.

"Well, Carmilla, I'd say the best thing to do is try to see if we can find some sort of connection between these people," he said, immediately taking action. He looked around at them, "Maybe it's blood type or . . . i'unno . . . birthday?" He ran his hand through his hair, jogging over to another frozen person. "I only just got here and this is happening; just my luck," he murmured, studying the person closely, scanning them from top to tail with his sonic screwdriver.

"What . . . " she began, moving closer once a cloud had obscured much of the sunlight. " . . . is that contraption? What effect does that have upon them . . . . ?"

"Sonic screwdriver," said the English bloke without looking up, "I'm running a medical diagnostic. They haven't gone into rigor mortis yet, even the ones that've been frozen for a long while, and they're still producing body heat. They have normal blood pressure, too, which should have reduced drastically when the heart stopped."

Rigor . . . what? "That is impossible," she defended soundly, reaching out a hand to cup the frozen man's neck. "The heart does not beat, yet he is warm. Life surely cannot retain in such a manner. A frozen heart, no heat within the body . . . something may still survive . . . . "

"Yeah," said the Doctor, sounding pleased, "There may be a chance. But I wouldn't touch them. We still don't know what's causing this. When did it start?" He glanced over at Carmilla, his dark eyes alive with energy.

"Five days prior," she informed, her thumb rubbing the pulseless man's neck before she retracted, hiding in the shadow of the building again once the cloud unveiled the sun once again.

"So what's changed?" murmured the Doctor. "You said they took some of them to hospital? Let's check out there!"

He was already running off, his trench billowing out dramatically behind him. Funny how he'd added Carmilla into his little investigation so quickly.

" . . . " She stared after him. Such a peculiar man. Cute, in a strange way. But maybe because he was nearly identical-looking compared to her Peter.

"Doctor . . . ?" called the Slavic belle. "Might you want to go the correct path . . . ?" she asked, pointed her finger the opposite side of her, down the other street.

The Doctor slowed to a stop, glancing around; he blinked twice, a broad grin forming on his lips as he scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Oh!" he said, somewhat embarrassed. He jogged up to Carmilla, flashing her a smile, and then ran in the proffered direction. "I knew that!" he called behind him. "You coming?"

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**Thanks for reading! Reviews are appreciated.**


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